Lost In The Shadows
by GoWithTheFlo20
Summary: How can one person cope with Amnesia, vampires and the crazy town of Santa Carla? Well Bella Swan is about to find out. The problem is, these vampires won't sit around and contemplate a persons soul if they decide they want them. Bella is going to have to learn to run...And run fast. Bella/Lost Boys.
1. Chapter 1

That fateful rainy day, was like every other since Bella's arrival in Fork's. Clouds and icy winds had settled over the skies, giving no inclination of moving along and letting any form of sun ray to peak through the bleakness, painting Forks in a dull mottled grey. Over all, typical Forks weather. Bella had gone through the motions of her morning, like a well-rehearsed routine, a quick shower, a quick breakfast that consisted of toast and black coffee, a quick, slightly stilted goodbye to Charlie before he left for work, and a quick escape from the empty and lonely house of her long-left childhood.

Quick, quick, quick. Bella almost felt like a duck singing the wrong vowel. Clambering into her truck, with the chilliness biting at her fingertips, she had to wait for the heating to kick in and warm up the cabby of her truck before she even thought about driving anywhere. Bella was never any good with the cold, and even the few minutes she spent going from her doorstep to her truck, the coldness had dropped her mood astronomically. A cold Bella was a pissed and short-tempered Bella. A pissed and short-tempered Bella didn't handle delicate situations properly. Today called for delicate handling.

Despite her sharp drop in temperament, the resolution she felt as soon as he eyelids had popped open from the few hours of sleep she had managed to grasp was still as heavy and hefty as lead. For once and for all, since she had stepped foot onto Forks high school grounds, she was going to put a full stop to the mind games a certain Edward Cullen was playing with her.

He was subtle, she would give him that, but not as subtle and clever as he believed he was. Or he was arrogant enough to believe Bella wouldn't pick up on his hidden ulterior motives. That was a fatal mistake. If Bella Swan was nothing but one thing, it was observant. It didn't take her long to realize what was going on in this backward and small town in the middle of nowhere.

One moment the Cullen's wanted nothing to do with her, not one word, then just as she was drawing away from them, when she had told herself enough was enough and they didn't need her dithering around, one would seemingly magically pop up out of the blue, say something cryptic but simultaneously engaging, and then walk away without a glance backwards. It didn't take a rocket scientist to know what they were doing, trying to draw her in but at the same time seem like they weren't, so if push came to shove, she would get the blame. The problem was, the one thing Bella couldn't figure out for the life of her, was why they were doing it. What their end game was. Why her out of all the simpering doe eyed woman that nearly swooned when Edward entered a room? Surely they would have been easier to fish for?

It didn't matter, Bella's decision was the same no matter what their reasoning was. She wanted absolutely jack shit to do with them. Not a god damned peep. Today would be the day she would leave the adopted, but look so similar they could be related, Cullens alone and politely ask them to do the same. If they didn't, well, Bella wasn't adverse to doing things 'un-politely'. It wouldn't be the first time she had to deck a guy for not taking no for an answer.

Parking her herculean truck in the packed car park of Forks high, Bella scrambled out, dragging her backpack with her, not looking forward to the confrontation that was sure to come one bit. As soon as the scuffed red door of her truck had closed with a dull thud and click, she felt the familiar tingle on the back of her neck, the sensation one would get when someone was watching them. Glancing behind her, Bella wasn't shocked by who she found watching her.

 _Edward Cullen._

He was dressed as he normally was, in designer clothes that didn't really belong in a school setting, leaning casually on his shiny silver Volvo. At least, if the Cullen's did put up a fight about this or carried on with their mind fuckery, she could do what she had wanted since she first landed eyes on that car. Key the tacky thing. Honestly, from the money Edward must have from that car and his designer clothes, surely he could have chosen anything but a Volvo? A Mini Cooper of all things would have been more manly. That Volvo looked like it came along with a free years supply of Tampax. Then again, with the amount of brooding Edward did, even from the little amount Bella knew about him, maybe he needed that Tampax prompto.

However, as restrained, indifferent, casual and relaxed he tried to portray himself to the world, Bella could see the rage lurking underneath it all as he eyed her with a blank face. Not giving him the satisfaction, Bella kept eye contact until he was the one to turn away. This was precisely why she needed to put a stop to this, for under the scripted lines worthy of Shakespeare, peaking out under lopsided smirks was always that glimmer of rage aimed at her. In all honesty? It frightened her more than she liked to admit. Something was wrong with the Cullens. So very, very wrong. She would be damned before she let them drag her down even further than they had.

Once Edward had stopped watching her, Bella turned her back to him once more, trying to keep herself standing tall. She wasn't the one who should feel ashamed by what she had done, he was the one just standing there watching her. She had another ten minutes until she would be needed in the English Lit room. Ten minutes to get her act together, and ten minutes before she put Edward in his place, the rest of the Cullen's hopefully following suit. Easing her bag off her shoulder, Bella dropped it to the pothole near her trucks front tire, bent down and unzipped the worn and old bag to make sure she had all the books she would need for classes that day.

Bella jolted slightly, glancing up at the red brick building when the first bell rang crystal clear through the crisp wind around her and her fellow students. Cramming her books back into the depths of her bag where they belonged, she mentally prepared her speech to Edward, getting lost in her own mind like so many instances before. However, this time was detrimental, for she didn't notice anything happening around her. She didn't look up when people started turning around, some diving out of the way. She didn't look up when the screeching of tires on ice alerted more people to the disaster about to happen.

She only glanced up, way too late mind you, when people started shouting her name in breathless and frantic voices, the noises becoming one in a drumming tempo. It took her a few seconds to clock onto what had everyone worried, but when she did her blood stilled in her veins like ice, pointlessly wondering how she didn't notice the terrified students or the monstrous blue truck of Tyler's skidding and sliding straight for her head on.

Her mind scrambled, clutched and shouted at her to move, to run for it, to do something, anything but squat there like a dear trapped in headlights. But nothing worked, she stayed there melded to the ground like a statue, seconds away from sure death. Bella expected her life to flash before her eye's like you saw in countless movies, but the exact opposite happened. She saw all the could have been's, the what if's, the should have's. She would never get to wear that ridiculous flat cap to her graduation. She would never see her family again. No more fish fries, no more warm soda, no more football games her father would rant at in his recliner. She wouldn't get to start her own family. Never fall in love. One quick swish of fates cruel hand and her future was gone, swiped from her before it was even hers.

Distantly, almost like magnets, she spotted Edward's face staring at her once more. He took a step towards her but his small sister, Alice if Bella remembered correctly, grabbed his elbow and prevented him from coming any closer. Her dainty head and short locks flicking back and forth as she shook her head at Edward's questioning glance. Then in clicked in Bella's mind. She had seen how fast Edward could move when he wanted to, one minute he was there and then he was gone. He could have done something to stop her from meeting this grizzly fate, but he wasn't. They could have saved her.

Rage, undiluted and climbing bubbled up in her chest like a pack of mentos added to a bottle of Coca-Cola. Whatever their secret was, she sure hoped it was worth the price of her life. Because, if by some miracle, she survived this, she was definitely going to make them pay double. And that fucking Volvo was going to pay first. With a gasp of air, the last she would likely take, Bella folded in on herself, squeezing her eyes shut as Tyler's truck came barreling closer, going super speed but paused at the same time. Like everything else around her, it made her feel like she was flipped upside down, her head spinning sickly.

Bella's whole body tensed, muscles feeling seconds away from tearing away from bone by the contort and tension. She should have never come to Forks. She should have made her own way like she wanted instead of letting her mother talk her into going to her estranged father's town. Bella wished with every fibre of her being that she could go back home, back to the sun instead of grey clouds, back to Phoenix. That's all she wanted, like a mantra, one word replayed in her mind over and over again.

 _Home. Home. Home._

Time fixed itself and all Bella saw was the bright blue blur of Tyler's truck a foot away from her face. She thought she would see her blood splattering everywhere like an extra scene from a slasher movie, or bone crushing pain. She felt nothing or saw anything. It all happened so fast that there was nothing for her senses to pick up. All Bella felt was this numbing dread and darkness embracing her, before life came zooming back to her like a base ball bat around the head.

Pain like no other zapped through her, her world spinning and twirling like looking through those toy kaleidoscopes children played with. All she could tell was it was dark, as if it was night time instead of early morning, blood, so much surrounding her, the heavy and hot substance dripping over her, some even seeping into her eyes, making her vision go a stinging and vibrant crimson, and that she was face first down on asphalt and shards of glass.

Blinking wearily, trying to clear her vision and stop herself from throwing up, Bella gasped and groaned in pain as her chest burned and twisted at the small breath. She was cold and hot, burning and freezing, sick and in pain. A flashing light caught her rolling eyes and groggily she realized it was a screen to a phone that looked like a size of a brick. Bella tried to pull her self closer, but her arms scrapped harshly against the grain of the road, digging the glass already in her arms in deeper, something laying heavy on her legs stopping her from dragging her broken body closer. In a last ditch effort, Bella yanked herself closer, nearly screaming in pain as it shocked through her body like electric, something ripping through her left leg.

Thankfully, as if god was smiling down on her for once, her fingers grazed the large phone. She could see three letters on the tiny screen of the contradictorily large phone. _Mom._ Scrabbling in her own blood, fighting to stay awake, Bella fumbled for the answer button, only managing to get one word out before the darkness grabbed her one last time, this time keeping its hold.

"Help."

* * *

 _~TWO WEEKS LATER~_

 _Beep, beep. Beep, beep. Beep, beep._

Like coming up from being deep in the ocean, Bella surfaced to real life in fractured pieces and crumbs. The obnoxiously loud and annoying beeping noise being the first thing she could fully lock onto. Slowly, like a butterflies wings unfolding for the first time, Bella opened her eyes, only to pinch them tightly shut at the blinding white light that seared her pupils. In immense pain, mostly radiating from the side of her head and her left leg, Bella tried once more to greet the outside world, this time taking it slower and blinking rapidly to stop her sticky eyes from stinging from the light above her.

For her efforts, she was welcomed with pale tiled walls, green curtains, and sterile equipment. Then she saw the blurry figure of a man standing above her, reminiscent of a grim reaper. Feature by feature he came into focus, from the thick curly hair, mutton chops, and horned rimmed glasses. His lips were moving as if he was speaking, but she couldn't hear a single word pass his mouth, only the beeping.

Heart beating frantically and with something blocking her nose, Bella reached up to tear the thing away when the man's warm hands stilled hers as a tube of some sort met her finger tips. Looking up, Bella tried her hardest to focus in on him and luckily, little by little, she could piece together his words until she was hearing full sentences.

"You're a lucky girl to emerge from such an accident alive. Take it easy now, leave that alone. Keep your weight off from your left leg, it's been put in a caste but you still need to be careful with the stitching we had to do. And don't touch the bandage on the right side of your head, not even a little bit. We need to make sure your vitals stay even. You've been in a coma for two weeks and aren't in the best of shape. Take it step by step okay? Don't rush. Just breath and keep calm."

Tyler's... Or was it Taylor's?... The blue truck bombing for her flashed before her eyes and Bella felt like crying. She was alive. She was still breathing. If she was a believer, she would have prayed and kissed the ground she laid on. Though she was not, some fat tears did gather in her eyes but did not fall. She was going to see another sunrise!

"That's it, nice and calm. It won't be long now, your family should be here any second. They've been visiting every day waiting for you to wake up. You've got good timing."

Bella's hand tangled into the stiff and scratchy sheets she was laying on, tears now falling freely down her face. Renee and Charlie were on their way, she would be going home, she would get to see them again. She wanted to get out of bed, she wanted to rush to meet them, but the pounding ache in the side of her head and the thrumming of pain from her left leg kept her bed bound. It didn't matter, they would be here soon and she would be able to go home, away from the hospital. She hated hospitals, as funny as it was for someone who had to visit them so often, she nothing short of detested them.

The acidic smell of bleach gave her a migraine and the atmosphere of sorrow felt like it seeped into her pores like poison. With a soft smile her way, the doctor told her he would be back before she knew it and left her to her own musings and the white washed room with stuffy air.

Minutes, or what could be hours later, just as her eyes were slipping shut for slumber, her protesting body demanding it, the wooden door to her single room banged open and made Bella jump. Wincing in pain, fisting the blankets and biting her cheek to stop herself from swearing, Bella watched through crinkled eyes as three smiling, frankly beaming, people came tumbling into her room, smiles only growing bigger when they saw her partially sitting with a pile of pillows propping her up.

They were all talking over one another as they came to her bedside, words morphing together until it was just white noise. Bella eyed them bewildered, trying to edge her way into their culmination of voices to tell them they have the wrong room when she noticed they were all calling her by her name, Bella.

The one closest to her, by her shoulder, was a woman in her mid-thirties, early forties at a push. The purple and yellow flower printed matching shirt and long skirt almost made Bella's eyes hurt as much as the white light did. Her hair, while short and cropped to her head, was a golden brown, almost blonde by its lustrous sheen.

The second closest to her was a pubescent boy, a bit more blonde than the woman, taking on a beach kissed look to its hazardous spikes and sweeps. He was in a Hawaiian shirt three sizes too large matched with board shorts and sneakers. A comic of all things rolled up in his hands.

The last, a teenager on the cusp of adult-hood, stood at the foot of her bed. All blue eyes and dark brown hair as curly and wild as hers. Bella could see the grease stains on his fingers and even a smudge of it on his white shirt and blue jeans. As mix match as these three people were, they all had two things in common. The brilliant smiles and expectant looks glazing over their eyes.

The woman went to take a hold of her clenched hand, still wrapped up in the sheet, but Bella jerked it away just in time. The woman pulled her hand back to her chest, looking hurt and confused at her actions. Finally, the chatter died down enough for Bella's unused and croaky voice to be heard over the heart monitor and buzz of fluorescent lights.

"I'm sorry... I think you have the wrong room. My mother and father should be here soon. Maybe try next door? There shouldn't be too many Bella's here... "

They didn't move, didn't speak or even look at Bella. Instead, they looked to one another, as if gauging what the hell was going on. Dread sank in Bella's gut but she adamantly pushed it away. This was a mistake. That was all. The woman went to grasp her hand again, but thought better of it and left her hand hovering in the air, just above Bella's own hand. Her voice was as soft as her features but twinged with evident worry. Bella swallowed deeply, her throat scratching at the lack of saliva.

"Bella baby... Bella, it's me? Your mom?

Bella couldn't help it, really she couldn't. She laughed, her body aching at the shake and movement. Was this a get well joke? A hospital gag for coma patients? Was that even legal? Any second Charlie and Renee would be walking through the door, saying _surprise! We got you good!_ Bella's laughter stalled and fractured until it came to a blundering stop when the people didn't leave, didn't laugh along when Bella had. The dread was back tenfold and not so easily pushed back down this time. The blonde boy edged closer to the woman, arms brushing, as the woman wrapped a thin, delicate arm around his shoulders and brought him closer to Bella as if seeing his face up close would jog her memory.

"Bella, that's Sam, your younger brother. Michael, surely you know Michael? Your twin? Stop being silly now Bella, no jokes until we at least get home... You're not joking are you?... You really don't know who we are, honey?"

The woman, the stranger claiming to be her mother, jostled the blondes shoulder when she said Sam and glanced over to the brunette when she said Michael. Bella clobbered for some words, but when her mouth kept flapping open and nothing came out, she settled for a shake of her head. Instantly regretting her action when the right side of her head flared up in pain at her hasty action, pulling her hand up, she felt the thick padding of the bandage that went along the side of her head and down to the nape of her neck in a curving motion, just above her ear and onto the top of her right cheek, just where her temple met her cheek bone, ending just underneath the corner of her eye closest to her hairline. Whatever laid underneath the thick bandage taped to her head, must have been gnarly and big from the amount of pain coming from it.

Focusing back into the room, Bella tried to clasp onto something, anything, to keep her afloat in this weird world she had awoken in. They didn't seem like they were joking, in fact, the woman looked like she was on the verge of a hearty crying session. This couldn't be what they were telling her though. She had a family already. She had a life time of memories with Renee and... Charles? Was it Charles or George? The pounding in her head took up beat once more, growing faster and faster, the thump even zapping down her spine.

Was this...Real? Was her life in Forks one giant detailed torrent of her imagination? Or was she in a hospital in Forks and this was a coma dream? The more she strove to think of Forks, Charles and Rachel... George and Ruth... Jamie and Renee...Charlie and Rebecca... Her parents, the fuzzier and disorientated the memories, places and names got.

Like a fog was settling over them, messing up the pictures until all she could clearly remember was colors and bleary faces. The pounding in her head escalated and the beeping of the heart monitor grew closer together until the beeping and the pounding in her head became one entity.

The woman detached herself from the blonde boy, Sam, and leaned over to look at the heart monitor. Bella, however, was too caught up in the pain, with trying to collect and keep safe her memories that were fading fast, hand now clawing at the bandage on her head, crumpling and tearing it in places as her fingers constricted on the wound, trying to stop the pain.

"Bella breathe! Deep breaths!"

Bella cried, clutching at her head as everything she ever knew started to disintegrate around her in tatters, the pain climbing all the while, leaving her to a black abyss of nothingness. No past, no beginning, no family, no name. Nothing, nowhere, no one. Dreaming, she was dreaming right now. This was a nightmare, nothing more. She just had to wake up, wake herself up and everything would be alright. Finally, the bandage was off and her fingers was met with a thick gash, the prickly feel of shaven hair that used to be long on the side of her head and down the side of her neck. Now it was short in contrast to the long tresses she could still feel and see over the rest of her head. The cut felt deep, sticky, with knots that must of been so many stitches holding the skin together, the flesh there hot and swollen. Bella cried harder as her fingers danced across and down the long wound swooping from just underneath her eye, over her ear and down the back of her head.

"Bella please baby breathe. Sam, go get the doctor quick!"

Sam darted out of the room like there was a mob on his tail. Bella sat there, crouched on a bed in a strange hospital, in a strange place, surrounded by strangers, loosing herself more and more as the second hand moved around the tacky green wall clock hanging on the wall wonkily. All she could focus on was trying to remember, loosing everything the more she pushed, hand still clutched at the wound on her head, sobs racking through her as everything started to lose focus, fading to black only to come to clarity startlingly fast in flashes. All there was, was pain and emptiness.

Distantly, as if not really noticing at all, she heard the doctor come in with rushed footsteps, saw the grim expression, clipboard held up against his chest like it was a shield to protect him from the inhabitants in the room. Faintly she heard his words as if hearing them through a concrete wall or under water, only some words making it through before the pain became too much, the stress barring down too hard and Bella crumpled form passed out cold on the tangled sheets, head wound out in the open for the world to see.

 _"I'm sorry... Slim chance... Trauma to the head... Severe... Two week Coma... Regain...Unlikely... Retrograde Amnesia..."_

* * *

 _~TWO MONTHS LATER~_

Those first tangible and frightening three weeks since the big revelation, Bella had spent in the confines of her bed, in the same hospital she had woke up in, only this time she had been wheeled to a different ward. One that held a menagerie of different patients, roaming from narcolepsy, epilepsy, dementia and every other 'memory problem' in between. Bella thought they, the good ol' white coats, just put them all together because it was easier, some place simple and out of the way to find, rather than any of the patients having anything alike with their problems.

They also wanted to keep her in to watch in case, and quote, _'more unfortunate complications popped up'_. Unfortunate complications... Yes, losing seventeen years worth of memories, not knowing a single face around you, being able to speak, read and know what certain words meant, but not being able to write a fucking single one down because you couldn't remember how to write, like a glitch going off in your brain when pen touched paper, was a simple complication. Pricks.

The first three days she had awoken after the first time, it had been hard to comprehend what was going on. Bella didn't cry, didn't scream, didn't shout. She was just numb. Everything was gone, poof, nothing, and she didn't know how to feel about it. How she _should_ feel about it. Depression is what the doctors told... Lucy, her mother. Bella didn't think she was depressed, just blank, like a chalkboard, scrubbed clean but you could still see the faintest smears of chalk dusted across the blackness, the smudges drawing your eye constantly.

Night time was the worst of all, curled up alone in her bed when she had no Emerson's... Family, nurses or doctors to occupy her swirling mind. Most of the time she found herself staring out the window near her bed, staring at the bright and clear moon in the dark sky, whispering facts the doctors had regurgitated to her. Trying to get them to sink in, to glue there. Something, anything she could fall back on if asked who she was, because in the brutal light of honesty, she didn't have a fucking clue for herself.

The year was 1987. Her name was Isabella Emerson, but she preferred Bella. She was seventeen, nearly eighteen. Her mother was Lucy Emerson, a small soft spoken, warm woman. She had a little brother called Sam, who liked comic books, arcade games and fashion. She had a twin brother called Michael, who was incredibly close to her before the 'accident'. She would repeat them until her eyes could no longer stay open and sleep thankfully dragged her down and out of the real world.

The Emerson's, her family, she had to keep correcting herself, had visited her every day she had been hospital bound as her leg healed and the gnarly scar on the side of her head thickened and grew pale instead of open, red and swollen. Apparently, though Bella had not seen it yet, it felt worse than it looked. Bella thought the nurses were just trying to keep her optimistic. Something that felt like her head wound felt, couldn't be anything less than eye catching.

It was hard, correcting herself, forcing herself to call this strangers family. But as time ticked on, it grew easier. The Emerson's own personalities were the sole reason. Lucy, bless her giving soul, had always come to her bedside packed with a big lunch box of goodies Bella could eat rather than the pig slop the hospital tried to pass off as something remotely edible. She would bring her little things from... Home. Trying her hardest to make Bella's little sectioned off part of the ward she was on as comfortable and nice as possible.

Sam would force her to move over, despite her battered body and a chair being available, lay beside her and read from one of his many comics, the little glossy books being a different one every time he came. He would dip his hand into the brown bag full of food Lucy brought with her, munching away as he rambled on about batman, the joker, Aquaman and the flash. He even once questioned her if she felt different, apart from the whole memory loss, and could do cool things like the flash could after his accident. Unluckily, real life was a bitch, and Bella had all the downsides of a serious accident and none of the upsides, like supernatural abilities to fight crime with. Although, if she could pull off things like the little-drawn people on the paper of Sam's comics could, fighting crime would be the last thing she would do.

Michael was... Michael was the hardest. He would sit for hours on the plastic and obviously uncomfortable chair at her bedside, smiling and joking. He would tell her about herself, things she did before, or re-hashing the stuff they had pulled together. It was upsetting, watching and listening someone who knew you more than you knew yourself. He seemed to get lost himself, sometimes completely forgetting Bella had no idea what he was talking about. He would say something with a bright grin, likely a private joke between the two before the big crash, as she had come to call it, and then clock on that Bella didn't understand when he was the only one to laugh.

Those were the worst times. He would grow silent, hesitant, distant, and Bella didn't know what to say or do to make him feel better. He knew so much about her, and she didn't have an inkling or single fact to draw on about him. She had to remind herself it wasn't his fault, he didn't mean to throw her amnesia back in her face, and it wasn't her fault either, she shouldn't feel guilty about it. It was just life, her life, and she needed to take it one step at a time. Bella tried her hardest with Michael, he was her twin after all.

Two months on from that disastrous first awakening, her scar was now an angry pale red, bordering pink, the side of her head was still shaven short, her leg was free from its cast, and Bella found herself signed out of hospital and squished in the back of an old pick-up truck with a big burly Alaskan malamute called Nanook and Michael. Lucy and Sam sitting in the front.

Bella had found out early on when questioning where her... Father was, that her parents had gotten a divorce, her father not making a single visit during her hospital stay, and that she would be hauling tail and truck across states to her grandfather's house to live in while Lucy got back onto her feet. Apparently, according to both Lucy and Michael, they had visited there when they were younger, toddlers really. Lucy had told her she would love this new town, that it was all bright lights, sunshine, and beach, all things pre-big crash Bella loved. After the big crash Bella agreed, as long as there really was plenty of sunshine to warm her cold bones up.

The drive was nothing short of long, extremely tiring, and hectic. By the time they had made it to California, frazzled and haggard, she was willing and more than ready to send her fists flying in Michael's and Sam's direction. It had started up half hour into their journey, and still going strong four hours later. The two would not shut up and choose a radio station they could agree on. Thank god that Lucy had seen Bella's darkening expression from the rear-view mirror and hastily taken control of the radio.

As Lucy fiddled with the old knob to the radio, a crackled version of an old song began to peek through the white noise, making Lucy perk up and search for the clearest version of it. Once the dial had settled, Bella could hear the slightly crackled notes of an easy and relaxing tune filter across to her, making her hum subconsciously. When the man started singing, Bella found herself singing along to the words despite not knowing them, they seem to just come to the tip of her tongue without a thought, leaving her lips in an airy whisper. She didn't know where it had come from, but it felt right, it clicked.

Turning around, for she had been staring out of the rolled down window until this point, idly watching the blur of houses and shopping centres fly by, letting the wind dance through the hair she still had and cool down the feverish heat of her scar that was still hot to the touch, Bella was greeted with brilliant and white smiles from both Lucy and Michael. Subconsciously flipping her hair over to cover as much of her scar as possible, Bella's words stalled as she rose an eyebrow in question towards the two.

Lucy turned the volume down slightly, so the song was nothing but a quiet hum in the background of noises coming from the inhabitants of the car and the occasional whine and panting from Nanook, Lucy stared at her through the rear-view mirror.

"I used to sing that song to you when you were little and ill. You used to sing along to it with me..."

Bella forced herself to give back the smile Lucy was giving her, confused but a little excited at this turn of events. That was a good thing wasn't it? She may not have any memories right now, but she might be beginning to pick up little things, even if it was just the words to a song from long ago. Maybe this was the first step, maybe there was hope of regaining her memories, contrary of what the doctors had told her back in the hospital. Maybe her mind wouldn't always be a fractured mess of present happenings and blank spaces of the past... _Maybe, hopefully, please god let that be so._

Bella shook her head, trying to push down the gloomy doubts and shining hopes building up in her. Another time. She would reflect another time. One step at a time. The sun was high in the sky, blazing down its warmth upon her. She was with people who cared for her. They were moving next to a beach. She wasn't going to get swept up in her broken mind when she had so much to look forward to. She would have plenty of time for that when night fell and she had nowhere to run to or place to hide in. When no one was present to watch her break apart.

As everyone settled back down, Lucy driving, Sam with his comic book, Michael and Bella looking out the window, a gaudy sign came into view, a postcard-esque picture of a beach and roller-coaster printed on the front, in big bold red letters distributed in curvy waves read WELCOME TO SANTA CARLA.

"Ugh! What's that smell?"

Bella glanced back into the car, turning to face Sam as he spoke, watching as his nose scrunched up and his eyes became slits, hands tightening on his comic book. Bella was suddenly hit with the urge to reach over the seats separating them and flick it. Lucy's chuckle was bright and cheery as she reached over and ruffled Sam's hair, making the boy shrink away and swat at her hand.

"That's ocean air, sweetie."

Giving up on trying to fix his hair, Sam flopped back into his seat and scrubbed his nose with the back of his hand, mumbling something that sounded suspiciously like 'Smells like something died.' At his remark, both Michael and Bella joined in with the laughter. Somehow, even with only two months worth of memories to back her assumptions up, Bella thought Sam, the ever city boy, would have trouble fitting in at a resort town... Would she too? Did she use to be like Sam?

Bella was snapped out of her wandering thoughts when she felt a soft tapping on her shoulder, the annoying rhythmic taps turning out to be Michael trying to get her attention. When she turned to face him, he simply pointed over his shoulder, to the back of the car, in the direction of the passed sign. Spinning in her seat, having to hold onto the back of the headrest to look out the back glass, Bella saw what had caught Michaels attention enough to make him want to show her. In thick, black graffiti were five simple words that gave a rather dark omen for such a sunny and happy place.

 _Murder Capital Of The World._

Bella scoffed and swivelled back into her seat, refusing to spend any more of her time pondering over why that was on the back. It was just a group of kids, locals likely, trying to scare the incoming tourists. Nothing more than a petty prank to get a petty reaction. Bella wasn't falling for it. However, by the looks on both Michael's and Sam's, the jovial glow to their face's long gone and lost from sight, it was at least working on those two.

It didn't take very long after passing the sign that Lucy took a sharp left, what looked to be an amusement park of some sort standing proudly in the distance, on a boardwalk, shadowed against the bright sun and periwinkle blue sky, and proceeded to pull up at a large, cabin-like home. Bits and pieces littered the large front yard leading up to the house, broken off parts of cars, half carved wooden totem polls, and what Bella had to do a double take at, a stuffed grizzly bear drinking from a beer bottle, large head thrown back as it 'guzzled' the beverage.

With the Radio off, Bella could hear the faint neighing of horses coming from the open fields surrounding the home over the hum of the trucks engine. When the loaded truck came to a rocky stop, Bella undid her seatbelt with shaky hands and clambered out of the car as fast as she could. She needed to stretch her legs, but most of all she had to get the hell out of the car. From the little bits Lucy and the doctors had told her, she had been riding her motorbike back home from school when a truck had swerved and hit her head on, sending her skidding down the road and head first into a large rock, with her motorbike mangled and laying on top of her left leg.

The truck had driven off before the ambulance had gotten there, having left tire tracks on the road by how fast they had driven away from the scene and a bleeding Bella. But even if that night was blurry, Bella could remember the pain and blood, so much blood, and a lovely memento of her scar present for the rest of her life. Let's just say being in a car didn't help her anxiety or nerves. Not so close to when she had only just gotten out of the hospital from a hit and run that left her permanently scarred and mentally broken.

Once out and in the open, Bella stretched her legs, grimacing when her left one sent a jolt of dulled pain up to her hip and spine. Reaching her hands up, Bella made sure her hair was flipped over her scar, hiding it from view. People stared and it made her uncomfortable. She would need a hat at some point, just to make sure her hair didn't get caught up in the breeze and flash her scar to passers-by. Bella didn't want to be stared at, not because of a scar.

Looking up to her left, Bella bounded over to Lucy and wrestled one of the box's she was trying to carry up to the patio of the house out of her arms and into Bella's own ones, blowing off Lucy's rebuffs with a careless wave of her hand. Her leg was fine, a bit sore, but perfectly capable of walking with a bit of added weight. Bella wasn't made of glass, and now that she was out of the hospital, away from the hovering and muttering doctors and nurses, she refused to be treated as such.

Just as Bella's foot made contact with the last step of the Patio, something caught the tip of her boot and made her stumble backward slightly, thankfully managing to regain her balance before she went tumbling down the stairs. Peering over the box, Bella spotted an older man, thinning white hair held back by a rolled piece of fabric wrapped around his forehead, arms and legs spread wide on the deck of the patio.

Panicking, Bella dropped the box onto the patio, luckily hearing nothing crash and break from inside its depths, and made a dash for the man. Huddled over him, she glanced over her shoulder and shouted to Lucy who was a few feet behind her.

"Call an ambulance!"

Lucy jumped at Bella's frantic voice and rushed over, dropping her own box next to the one Bella had discarded and came over in a flutter of a lilac skirt, hovering over the man, who was laying on the floor, tapping him on the cheek calling Dad. Bella startled slightly as she realized just who was on the floor, eye's growing wide as she stared at her grandfather. This man was her grandfather. This possible dead man was her grandfather. Well, _shit._

"Is he dead?"

Spinning around, still crouched over the man, Bella shot Michael a warning look, he and Sam must have snuck up while Bella and Lucy were distracted by the possibly dead body littering the wooden patio. Michael grew sheepish and held his hands up in the universal sign of surrender and backed up a few steps.

"If he's dead, can we move back to Phoenix?"

Bella's eyes closed as she took a steadying deep breath, trying to calm herself down when Sam spoke up. She swore black and blue, brothers were more hassle then they were worth. If possible, you should avoid having any. Especially having ones that didn't seem all that disturbed at the sight of their could be dead grandfather... What the hell was wrong with them? Was she really the one with something wrong with her head, or had the hospital got it mixed up and it should have been Michael and Sam forced to see the head shrinks?

"Playing dead. And by what I heard of it, doing a damn good job at it."

Bella jumped at the new voice piping up, ending up falling straight onto her ass against the rough wood of the patio, blinking rapidly and over at the man she had moments prior believed was dead and gone from the world for good. Once the shock had worn off, her heart still going like a jack rabbit, Bella ran a tired hand down her face. Now she knew where Sam and Michael got their slightly sociopathic reactions or lack thereof. From good old grandpa Emerson.

As Bella dusted her hands off on her jeans and stood up, Lucy helped Grandpa come to a stand, giving him a hug as if she was used to this type of behaviour. Bella really, really hoped not. Her heart still hadn't recovered from this fright, let alone if the old man decided to try and pull a repeat. God help her and please don't let this be any omniscient pre-warning of what her stay in Santa Carla was going to be like.

* * *

 _~THREE HOURS LATER~_

Bella, after unpacking her bags in the room that had been delegated as hers, stumbled down the stairs, dodging Michael and Sam as they came zooming past her, chasing one another. From the snit bits she had picked up from their raised voices, the fight had broken out over their grandfather growing a weed garden through the kitchen window, a TV and something about MTV. How those three linked together, Bella had no fucking clue, but they did in the mysterious workings of her brother's minds.

Fumbling at the bottom of the stairs, having to grasp for the banister to keep her balance, Bella watched as the two Emerson wonders whizzed past her. However, when Michael took a swoop for Sam, Sam dodging and kicking out behind him, making Michael hiss as Sam's foot thwacked his shin harshly, Bella had to chuckle at their antics. Feeling a warm arm wrap around her shoulders, Bella glanced up to a smiling Lucy, her own smile becoming more pronounced when the dimple-cheeked woman bent down and kissed her forehead, pulling her close for a side hug.

"Why don't we leave the boxes for a little while and head out for the boardwalk? You three can get to know the town while I look for a job. What do you say?"

Bella nodded, Sam said a wistful finally and Michael gave a non-committal sure. Then they were all off heading towards the door, Bella pausing at the back of one of the plush chairs to pluck up her jacket and beanie hat she had found in one of her boxes, sliding it over her head, making sure her hair and hat was covering up what they could of her scar. Maybe getting some fresh air, seeing some new faces and sights would be a good thing, something to keep her balanced and away from the dark turn they often went to when she had nothing to occupy her mind since her exit from the hospital.

Before she could make it to the front door, slipping through like the rest of her family, a wrinkled hand grasped her elbow, bring her to an abrupt stop. Peering up, she was met with her grandfathers worry etched face as he glanced outside to the setting sun.

"You be careful out there Bells. Things... Things aren't always what they seem. Just... Be careful okay?"

Bella frowned deeply, feeling like it held more meaning than a simple concern for her well being due to, well, due to her not having a single memory. Before she could question the old man, dig little deeper, he patted her on the back, turned on his heel and was gone before Bella could mutter a single word. Brushing it off, Bella scoffed at herself. She was feeling vulnerable, a feeling she hated, but one she felt all the same. She was transferring that onto other peoples actions, giving her reason's to lock herself up in her room and pretend the world didn't exist.

But as much as she wanted to do that, she knew she couldn't. Ignoring a problem didn't make it go away, only aggravated it until it got infested with more problems. And anyhow, she knew the dangers of a busy resort type place. Muggings, fights etc. She just didn't know how she knew that, where she had learned it or who had told her. Memory problems was a slippery fucker like that. As Bella left, she straightened her spine and stepped out into the orange light of the setting sun, slamming the door behind her.

* * *

 **IMPORTANT, PLEASE READ:**

Twilight and the lost boys were my first ever dalliance into the fanfiction world, and therefore, hold a special little place in my heart. The kind words and support I got for those first few chapters of, practically, me testing out the waters, were heart-warming, and even now, I often get asked about when my Dwayne/Bella or Paul/Bella fics will be updated.

Unfortunately, those stories got very muddled for me, a bit convoluted and back then, I could hardly string an ongoing plot together lol. While they will always be special to me, because they were one of the first fanfictions I wrote, I just don't feel comfortable enough to go back to them and continuing it. Especially after all, it's been two years and, in my opinion, my story telling and writing in general has improved.

That said, the love I was shown, and still given, for those little fics really does bring a smile to my face and It didn't feel right leaving the fans of those fics in the dark. So…

HERE WE ARE BOYS!

I've salvaged what I could on my old fics, and many of you might recognize this beginning as the beginning chapters of my fic, Blue masquerade, a David/Bella fic I wrote back in the day that, like the others, didn't get very far at all. Additionally, you might see some little scenes from my other fics making an appearance again, more polished this time, because well… Nostalgia lol. Instead of spreading my attention across four fics, I've decided to sit down, pen it out, and mix them all together into, well, this madness!

Due to this, the pairing is Bella/Lost boys, so Bella _and_ David, Dwayne, Paul and Marko. If that isn't your cup of tea, sorry, but It's just the road I want to take with this fic.

This fic will be a very strong M. I can't stress that enough.

So, this is for you all guys! I hope you guys will like this fic and will enjoy the ride we are about in embark on.


	2. Chapter 2

_No one's P.O.V_

Santa Carla sat right out on the cusp of the Pacific. If you stood on the beach at night, watching the waves break on the sand brushed silver by moonlight, it was one of the most magnificent places ever to be seen. Warm summer nights brought about bands of roving teenagers, with alcohol in their blood and dreams in their eyes, to the waters edge, where bonfires would be lit in tribal quarters. A strip of leaping amber light stretching beyond the coast, as far as the naked eye could see.

 _That_ was Santa Carla.

A place where fire clashed with water, and day melted to night, and time didn't mean much at all.

Nevertheless, Santa Carla was not a quiet town. Nor was it peaceful and calm. It beat in the land like an open chest, the banks of the cliffs cracking like split ribs, thrumming with life, and, if you turned from that glittering sea, that silver beach and swollen moon, you'd find the heart.

The Boardwalk.

Music and rides, chatter and singing, the heartbeat of the small coastal city sang. When you walked the trail, past the three-tries-for-a-dollar booths, piercers and tattoo artists haggling for better spots than the clothes venders, past the food stands selling hot-dogs and cotton candy, past the Tilt-a-whirl, teacups and Ferris wheel, so brightly lit it stole the place of the stars on the skyline come night, then you came to the core.

The carousel.

The locals said you've never really been to Santa Carla unless you rode the merry-go-round and got the chip to prove it.

It was an old beast of a machine, made in the fifties, carved with real wooden horses of notched paint and splintered timber, and the ditty it sang from the loudspeakers hidden in the beams of the tented roof was Waltzing Matilda.

 _Up jumped the swagman and sprang into the billabong, you'll never catch me alive, said he. And his ghost may be heard as you pass by that billabong, you'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me. Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda, you'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me. His ghost may be heard as you pass by that billabong, you'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me. Oh, you'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me._

That would be the last song Big Ed, the security guard, would ever hear, and his ghost was never heard as anyone passed the old merry-go-round.

That particular night, the last night of his life for poor Big Ed, a group of kids flooded the carousal. They were easily recognizable by their Mohawks and shaved heads, the tattoos littering their arms, the garish colours they were in board shorts, and the 'My Beach, My Wave' logo shirts they preened in.

Big Ed had dealt with them before.

 _They_ weren't the problem.

Not really.

A small gang who had taken to calling themselves Surf Nazis.

Children playing at cops and robbers, more like.

Charming name, Big Ed thought.

They stormed the carousel like a flock of flamingos, jostling the other riders, shooing off those they didn't like, harassing the odd girl that caught their eye before she tucked tail and ran. Their leader, a man called Greg, leaned back into one of the chariots, watching it all, a half smile crooking at his chapped lips, his sun-kissed arm slung around the petite shoulders of Shelly, his current squeeze.

The merry-go-round groaned as it began, the calliope whirring to Waltzing Matilda.

That's when _they_ came. They had no name, unlike Greg and his gaggle of geese. Only what other venders and security guards had taken to calling them in passing, between hushed whispers and darting glances.

The Lost Boys.

So called, Big Ed thought, because everyone who ever gravitated towards them, though no proof could ever be found, got lost, _fast._

Peter Pan collecting souls for Neverland.

For how else was immortality gained if not in a bargain?

Life _gives_ life.

Their spearhead, a tall, blonde and black shadow by the name of David, slunk up and slipped into the twirling carousel, just as the song was winding to its last chorus. The others trailed the path he blazed.

Shelly's eye wandered.

Shelly's eye caught.

And Shelly smiled.

His face flickered in the lights, as David smiled back, grin slick and keen, pulsing in shades of blinking red. Greg-with-his-greasy-hair didn't like that smile, he didn't like it one bit. He shot a scowl to his girlfriend and jumped from his seat, lurching towards David's direction.

They moved to walk passed him, as if Greg wasn't even there, and that, being so invisible, with all his bright clothing and loudmouth and spiked, bleached hair, was something his fragile ego couldn't take. His hand shout out as David strolled passed, knocked into shoulder, though the blonde held true.

Waltzing Matilda carried on Waltzing.

David's lip curled, Greg's men homed into the action, hyenas sniffing a fight wafting in the air, and behind him, the three boys closed ranks behind the platinum blond.

 _Won't you go a-waltzing, Matilda, with me._

Big Ed should have left it very well alone. Let the two duke it out. It wasn't really his problem. Who knew? One or the other might solve the problem of the next for him. Yet, Big Ed didn't. David took a half step, as measured as he was, as cold as his gaze, and he promptly found a nightstick pressed against his Adam's apple.

Big Ed would remember, for the short time he was alive after this, how those wintry sapphire eyes drew up the nightstick, slowly, so slowly, so sure of himself, down to the beefy hand clutching the handle, attached to the body of Big Ed. All three hundred pounds of him.

A security guard who had made it difficult, one too many times, for either the Surf Nazis or the Lost Boys to have their fun.

The carousel ground to a halt.

Matilda waltzed no more.

The ride was over.

Big Ed's fate was sealed long before he spoke.

"I told you to stay off the Boardwalk."

The blue-eyed boy, for he was a boy to Big Ed, stared at him, not moving for a long while. Though his own eyes were small, beady, the bullies in class so long ago used to taunt him with, what they lacked in size they tripled for anger.

David smiled, softly. A twist to the lips like a snake coiling around an already dead mouse. He tilted his head over his shoulder, slanting chin towards his boys, but never let his gaze drift from Big Ed's.

"Come on, let's dip."

He walked away. They all walked away, snickering. Big Ed, as so many others would, thought it was over.

He couldn't have been more wrong.

With night so heavy around him, Big Ed turned to the brats at his back.

"You too. Off the Boardwalk. And don't come back!"

Greg stared at him, looking as if he might spit in Big Ed's face, before, wisely, choosing to leave with his flock.

It was getting late. Time to shut down the hot dog booths, the three-for-a-dollar come-ons, the Tilt-a-Whirl, the Ferris wheel, and the teacups. Big Ed watched the banks of lights go out one by one as the amusement park closed down for the night.

He was tired by the time he shirked his locker open in the back of his tiny office and retrieved his lunch pail. In his head, he knew a swift way to deal with those kids. A gun and a clip. However, he would never get a gun, as he would never get to pass the police exam, as he would never make it home.

Three am, and for the only time on the twenty-four-hour clock, Santa Carla was silent. The only sound to be found was Big Ed's boots crunching on the gravel as he trekked across the empty parking lot, out of breath, cursing the kids who parked so close and forced him into the back lot. He made it to his car, rummaging in his pocket for his keys.

That's when the noise came. At first he thought it was the wind, a rush of air gusting abruptly off the beach. But… There was something else. Something lurking in the low notes like perfume. A high screeching sound, like chalk skittering across blackboard, a knife scraping plate, a whispering-

A hundred voices murmuring his name.

Big Ed looked up for the final time. His eyes widened in surprised. His mouth opened, scream building in his lungs. He didn't get that far. He was gone before he could so much as exhale. His lunch pail clattered to the warm, worn pavement, the only sign he had ever been there to begin with.

Questions came easy. Where did he go? A man that size couldn't just vanish. One breath in, a blink, and gone. The boardwalk was barren, the only faces were those of the screaming masks on the front of the fun house, the beach deserted, bonfires nothing but damp logs. The only sound left was the lapping of the waves.

A rush of wind. Screeching. A whisper, soft like a lovers caress. Something fell with a thud to the wet sand lining the cliffs. By daybreak, the tide would wash it away. If it wasn't for the uniform, the body had nothing in common with Big Ed.

What had once been a burly security guard was nothing but a rag doll now. Nothing left beneath his clothes but bones and skin. A large cavity tore his neck asunder, the flesh ripped clean away, only a few tattered bits of sinew and meat dangling from stark white bone.

It wasn't a messy corpse. It was all withered out, like an apricot left to rot in the sun. Blood gone. Every drop. Big Ed's listless eyes gaped into the sky as the wind and whispering faded with the waning moon.

Laughter danced in the breeze of a cave.

* * *

 _Michael Emerson's P.O.V_

The night was alive. There was no other way to describe it, at least to Michael, who, seventeen years old, had never seen anything remotely like Santa Carla at night. The beach was crammed, a writhing throng, part swarm, undulating under music. Bonfires lit their way like roads to Rome, creeping almost to the very edge of the boardwalk. Each bonfire seemed to attract a thousand kids who bounced between the fire, fluttering like moths in the dark.

And in his head, all Michael could think about was the precise phrasing he was going to use to tell his mother that he wanted to drop out of school. Get a job. Anything but… But _this._ Perhaps he could work on the boardwalk. Toss sausages in buns, or spin sugar, or, perhaps, load the kids onto the rides. He didn't care much what it was he did, but it had to be something.

Michael had to _do_ something.

He thirsted for change like a babe wailed for their mother.

After the ugly divorce, after Bella's accident… He couldn't go back to pretending everything had been as it was. He was changed. His family was changed.

His mother wouldn't understand. In fact, she was ostensibly swimming in the opposite direction as him, breaststrokes back to the past, trying so hard to turn things around, turn them back to what they were. It was hopeless, Michael knew. Once the butterfly was out the chrysalis, there was no stuffing its wings back in. You only tore them off, otherwise. As bleak as their dwindling funds. Another reason he needed a job, rather than early morning lectures.

He just had to convince his mother.

It wouldn't be that much of a struggle, would it? After all, Bella was already off, Lucy having hired a home tutor who was due next week, the amnesia having stolen her ability to write much more than her name before her brain went haywire and short circuited. And if Michael was home more, if he got a night job, he could be there to help. Help around the house. Help his mother with money. Help Bella scramble back to… However far she could scramble back after having her head caved in from a bike ride gone wrong, skull smashed with a metal plate holding what little remained together.

She had nearly died. His twin had nearly died. Alone, smeared across tarmac like a bug on a windshield. Michael hadn't been there. Michael had been in school, playing a basketball game, the last of the season, the same game Bella had been riding to come and watch. It was his fault she was out on the road that night, exactly where an eight-by truck could clip her tail, and-

 _Not again._

Michael would talk to his mother, make her see the light, and that would be the end of that.

He _wasn't_ going back.

Until then, he would enjoy all Santa Carla had to offer a desperate youth hunting for a distraction.

Rock music whirred in the air, pounding around them. A band played up ahead, swinging on a makeshift stage, their own music mixing with the humming of the dozen boomboxes littering the bonfires of the beach. Michael's feet hit the cloying sand in time with the beat. A thud, thud, thudding that eased his frayed nerves and dark thoughts.

It felt good to be outside. To breathe fresh air tainted with the sweat of a thousand bodies dancing. Sweet from the beach and rotting seaweed, sour from the people and smoke. There was something… Tantalizing in that scent. A balance between death and life and all the small victories in between.

Bella appeared to appreciate it too, lingering, unhurried, wide-eyed wonder as she glanced all about her, darting this way and that, caught by the lights and the music.

Sam… Not so much, by the curl of his nose.

The trio of siblings had split from their mother as soon as the car had rolled to a stop in the parking lot, as Lucy went job searching and the siblings went to sniff out trouble. They found said trouble, or as close to it as any of them dared, in the mosh pit of the beach stage. A veritable sea of drifters, drugs and daring deeds.

A young blond girl, with dirt smudged over her chin, ran past them, laughing as she weaved and leapt over a prone couple by a drift log. A couple who appeared entirely too caught up with shoving their tongues as far down each other's throats to notice the little imp of a girl had nabbed the guys wallet from where he left it sitting in the sand.

Michael moved his own to his front jeans pocket.

Whether or not Santa Carla was the murder capital of the world, it sure as hell a lot wilder than Phoenix. Michael liked it. He liked it _a lot._ He wanted to look everywhere, be everywhere, see and hear it all at once until his thoughts were drowned out his own head.

For just once, he didn't want to think.

Just… Be.

Bella was the first to stop by the stage, reaching out to silently tug on Michael's shirt to get him, too, to stop, knowing there was no way he would hear her raspy voice over the din of the music. Sam caught up moments later, scuffing his shoes in the sand. His face was like thunder. Overcast.

The wind from the sea was ruffling his hair, the hair Sam spent twenty minutes perfecting in homage to that reckless care of James Dean, before he left the house, after another twenty minutes of making sure his clothes were just the right combination of Matthew Broderick and Rob Lowe.

It was funny, Michael thought. Back in Phoenix, Sam would have blended in with the crowd. Yet, here, in a place like Santa Carla, lost in the horde of jumping teenagers, dressed for summer and the beach, wearing everything from skimpy bikinis to sweatshirts and torn jeans in leopard print, he stuck out like a swore thumb.

He wasn't too impressed by it all, with the scowl marring his face.

"I want to go home and change."

Michael laughed, as Bella jostled Sam's shoulder.

"Will you stop worrying about your clothes? They're fine."

Sam batted back at Bella, who only chuckled at the half-hearted swipe at her arm.

"Just because you look like you go dumpster diving in goodwill, doesn't mean we all want to look like that. There is more than plaid and denim to fashion, Bella. You do realise that, right?"

Bella pulled on her shirt underneath her denim patched jacket, wearily eyeing the plaid.

"I thought you said I looked good in this?"

Sam scoffed.

"Good for a lumberjack. Yeah. You look like John Bender from Breakfast club, and he was never the hot one. Lose the beanie and then we'll talk."

Michael clapped a hand up the back of his head. Sam yelped and scowled up to his oldest brother, rubbing the back of his head, cheeks flushing.

"Knock it off, squirt."

The beanie was a sore spot. As Sam should know, by the way Bella, every now and again like the tick of a clock, readjusted the old hat. Making sure it covered the side of her shaved head, where the scar, still hot and pink with knotted stitches, poked out from under a lock of hair, slicing down beneath her eye. However, Bella seemed to hesitate, squinting to the crowd of mismatched people around her. Gently, she reached up and swiped the hat off, brushing a hand through her auburn hair, scar free to the breeze, and resolutely dumped the hat in the sand at her feet.

It was the first time she'd dared going out without covering it up as best as she could.

"Better?"

Sam beamed, nodding warmly.

"Better."

Maybe Sam knew what he was doing in the end. More than Michael. If only he could-

 _No thinking, only music._

Looping an arm around his brother's shoulder, and one around his sisters arm, Michael dragged them into the heart of the mosh pit. The centre of action is where he needed to be right then, and he clambered for it. The music grew, rising, throbbing, washing away all his worries like communion washed away a sinners evil.

The music surrounded him, embraced, and he could feel the drums hammer through the sand, the howling of a rifting guitar pressing against his bare face and arms. He closed his eyes, and could feel the singer's voice behind his eyelids.

This was it.

This was life.

He opened his eyes and looked over the crowd. Everybody was moving, smiling, breathing in one giant breath, until the wind no longer belonged to the sea, but to them.

What could be better than this?

That's when he saw _her_.

It was her hair that caught his attention at first, a dark cascade of whorls billowing about pale, petite shoulder. A smear of coal in the ocean of sun streaked blondes. She was dressed all in lace, like a gypsy or a bride, or a girl from a fairy tale. Her clothes would look absurd on someone else, as if they had cut up their grandmother's curtains. Yet, on her, well…

Michael had to remember to breathe.

He had never seen anyone like her before, and he felt a little like Goldilocks. Everything about her, from her moonlit face to the soft swaying of her hips, was just right.

She was in the middle of the crowd, up on the ledge behind him, but Michael could see only her. It was as if they were the only two people truly alive, really listening to the music, as if the thousand others around them had just been put there for show. Plastic mannequins in a shop window. Convincing, but missing soul.

When she danced, she was dancing just for him. When she smiled that sweet, sad smile, Michael knew just what she felt. Sweet and sour, like the air all around them. Tragically decayed. The right side of wrong.

Sam said something, something that made Bella chuckle, but he couldn't hear. Not over the battering of his own heart beating in time to the drums in his ears, deafening him. There was a tightness in his chest, a wonderful tightness of nerves firing in all directions, bursting.

And then she looked at him.

Looked at him straight.

Eye to eye.

Sad smile to sad smile.

Maybe she saw something in him too, a reflection of tension, it glittered in her dark gaze, in the crease of her frown, the way her mouth opened just so.

Michael smiled, teeth flashing in the light of the stage, and her gaze darted away, only to flutter back moments later, bashful but thrillingly bold. The next time she looked away, she grabbed the hand of a sandy-haired boy, younger than even Sam, around ten or eleven Michael would guess.

He had the same sad, sweet face as the girl.

Brother and sister, most likely.

She turned and pulled the youngster into the roving mob.

Michael's feet were moving before he ever really decided he wanted to follow. A fish caught on a hook.

"Sam! Come on!"

Sam dipped and dived after his marching brother.

"Huh? Where are we going? What-"

His complaints were lost on Michael. As lost as the music and everything else.

As lost as Bella standing on a crest of a rock, watching the band, entranced by the bright lights, who, after finally glancing behind her, saw who two brothers cutting through the edges already.

"Hey! Where are you going? Wait for me!"

Michael didn't hear her. By the time she clambered down the rock she had climbed to get a good look at the stage, both her brothers were gone. She swore thickly under her breath.

"Bastards."

And no one, least of all the siblings, saw a pale, nimble hand sink into the sand, lifting a woolen hat up to a crookedly grinning face. A soft sniff. The rumble of a barely restrained growl was lost in the music, but the grin grew wide. Toothy. Sharp. A devils smirk on an angelic visage.

The head of golden curls zipped away.

* * *

 _Lucy Emerson's P.O.V_

It was undoubtedly cheerful here, at the boardwalk. Dazzling lights, bars, and all the glitzy entertainments anybody could hope for. It was definitely a change to the life Lucy had built in Phoenix.

The right kind of change, she prayed.

Not just for herself, but for her children too. For Sam, who, she knew, fought with his sexuality, to fit into a bigoted world. For Michael, who always shouldered more than he should have, who soaked in blame like a sponge, older than his years. For Bella, who not only battled her injuries, but was fighting to regain all she had lost, all seventeen years' worth, all the things missing to her, and, most importantly, wrestled to discover, all over again, who she was.

That's why she had let the trio go down to the Boardwalk so soon, alone, out from under her cautious eye. They needed to stretch their wings, gain a sense of their new home, and maybe unwind from those strains tying them into tangled knots of fidgety anger.

Hopefully it would stop them bickering so much.

Besides, they had promised to stay together. Gave their word in a chirping chorus. What could go wrong? It was safe, she reasoned with herself, against her bubbling anxiety. Even at the worst of times, they had enough common sense between them, though, Bella had always been… Spirited.

Spending her sixteenth birthday in that jail cell for starting that bar fight had proven that enough for Lucy's tastes, even if she, herself, couldn't remember.

God knew where she had gotten that fake ID.

Only the devil had the sense to figure out why she bottled that man over the head.

And, Lucy thought, neither deity or Satan knew when the box of matches had came into play

Maybe Lucy should go and find them, just to make sure, and-

 _They were safe._

She shouldn't nag or pester.

Lucy refused to be one of _those_ mothers.

The sound of rock and roll power chords wafted from the distant beach. A rock band was playing out there that night, on the edge of the Boardwalk, with an ocean of kids watching them, including, she imagined, her children.

That was nice.

They could enjoy themselves.

Whittle away the night with music and dancing.

Far away from Michael's worries, Sam's fears, and Bella's uncertainties.

And hopefully any beer bottles or lighters the latter could find.

Plus, Lucy was merely grateful she wasn't down there herself. Once, long ago it felt like, she would have loved being in the bottom of all that noise and action. Now, it only made her ears ache. The first sign of old age, Lucy chuckled, was an aversion to rock bands.

No. The pier, an offshoot of the Boardwalk, was far more her speed these days. A boulevard of stores and diners built on broad stilted platforms over the water. Lucy was surprised by the variety here now. When she was a young girl, there had been nothing but dank bars, shrouded in smoke, and the odd shop selling souvenirs of Santa Carla that were actually made in Hong Kong.

Since then, which must have been… Twenty years now, gosh, that made her feel _old,_ the pier had gone chic from the tourist profits. Oh, don't get Lucy wrong. These were still tourist traps, but _pretty_ tourist traps now. Overpriced, but overflowing with interesting crafts, gadgets and knickknacks.

Lucy would have to come back when she had more money rolling in the bottom of her purse.

 _If_ she ever had more money.

Lucy groaned. It was only her first night back in Santa Carla. She needed time to settle. Not worry about jobs, money, and that horrid thing called real life that slumped all adult shoulders.

Not tonight.

Lucy would leave all that dreadfulness to tomorrow and the blinding light of day, where there was no hiding from the cracks of her life.

Idly, she ambled into a tiny circle gathered around the steps of a shut shop, portable loudspeaker bleating with buzzing zeal.

"You will be saved!''

Lucy paused at the edge, peering through the crowd. A scrawny man, standing tall on the end rung, ranted to those who bothered to listen. It was like gazing through time itself, for Lucy. He was clad in threadbare bell-bottoms, ragged at the flared end, and a dulled, flowered shirt, as if he hadn't changed his clothes in twenty years. His long, flaxen hair fell into his face in stringy ribbons as he hollered.

"All of you! Saved!"

He staggered down from the step, his right-hand waving aloft, reaching for the dark skies above.

"From the sin of Santa Carla! Saved! All of you!"

The former hippie lingered, doubtful, as if his well-memorized speech had momentarily bolted from what bit of his mind remained from the years of acid trips and mushroom jaunts. Lucy watched him, mind drifting.

They all used to look like that once, she thought. Herself included. Now… Now he looked out of place, unwashed, crazed. Everything… Everything had changed. For better or for worse, it was all so different. Most had moved on from the sixties, left the drugs behind, abandoned the thought of free love and protest marches to where they belonged. In a time long past.

Life wasn't any the worse for it.

Only changed.

As they, unlike this man, had shifted with the winds.

The scrawny man paced back and forth in his little arena, like a caged tiger prowling, mumbling to himself as if it could jog his memory. Lucy felt… Lucy felt sorry for him. To be so… Entombed. _Lost_. He was as lost as the rest of them, only, he looked backward, not forward.

"Confront your sins!"

The man grinned to the crowd, only three of his teeth left.

"That's it! That is what you must do! Confront your sins! Santa Carla, you can still be saved!"

The couple standing next to her glanced her way, as if asking if she bought any of this either. Lucy shrugged; timid smile etched onto her welcoming face.

"I think I used to date that guy."

The pair laughed as they walked away. Lucy, ultimately, couldn't help herself, as she ambled away, gravitating towards a kiosk covered with tear-away letters and leaflets. Apartments for rent, boats for hire, self-realization seminars, and a sprawl of missing person posters stared back. There wasn't a single Help Wanted sign.

Brilliant.

Fantastic.

Perhaps she should try feeding her children grass.

Turn them out to pasture like cows.

"Excuse me."

A feathery voice called past Lucy's shoulder. She stepped out of the way on instinct, and watch a thin woman, red ringed around her bloodshot eyes, tape a new handout over the others yellowed with age.

A picture of a large man bleached out most of the paper, smiling underneath the bold MISSING pronouncement. Beneath, as if on after thought, was a biro'd chicken scratch. _Security Guard. Edward Winowski, known as Big Ed. Forty-Six. Last saw three weeks ago. Fifty Dollar reward for any information._

Lucy didn't read any further. The slender woman had two small children with her, clutching at her skirts, the boy as big as his father was. The willowy lady looked up at Lucy as she strode away. Her eyes were poignant. Shot red with tears sobbed, mouth reedy with fear. Maybe, just maybe, Lucy thought, there were worse things than being jobless, after getting a messy divorce and moving away from everything you've known for the last twenty-five years.

She still had her children, and that was something to hold close.

Lucy carried on, for how long, she could not say, until she reached a restaurant. It wasn't the restaurant itself that caught her attention, but the small child weeping near the door. A young boy, maybe three or four, clasping a teddy, looking lost.

 _Who wasn't lost around Santa Carla?_

Lucy squatted down beside him, asked the boy what his name was. He only cried harder. She asked him if his parents were around, and still, no response, only tears. Lucy glanced about. He couldn't have wandered far, not with his short legs. The parents must have been somewhere nearby.

God knew Lucy had been in their shoes before, with how Bella used to disappear in the blink of an eye if you so much as glanced away.

They must have been so worried.

A glowing store right next to the Chinese takeout, a place with a bright neon sign that read MAX'S VIDEO, was the contender Lucy found for the little boys excursion. Maybe the parents were still in there.

She bundled the boy into her arms, smiling gently as he grabbed at her, strolling for the shop front. Three teenagers entered the shop in front of her, snaking in a string. Their jackets were… New. Odd. One of them wore an old tux bestrew with safety pins, another embroidered leather. Each one of their jackets was different from anything she'd seen teenagers around here wearing. Probably some sort of teenage fashion statement she was too old to understand anymore. Maybe even bought from one of the clothes venders.

Bella would love a jacket like that.

Maybe Lucy could find the shop and-

First, the boy.

"C'mon."

She whispered to her small charge.

"We're going to get you home."

She followed the youths into the video store.

The door buzzed as she opened it.

A towering man, hair curly and dark, glasses thick rimmed, veered from where he had been watching the teens as Lucy and the small boy entered. She watched as his scowl bowed to a smile. It was a nice smile, a little voice whispered in her head. Open and friendly and warm.

The door hissed again, and Lucy had to dodge the body darting into the shop to stop herself from being barrelled over.

The stranger ignored her, a vivid youthful fellow with a mop of golden curls, another embellished jacket thrown about his shoulders. He was beaming ear from ear, a-

A hat clutched in his hand as he darted for the group of boys meandering around the rental desk.

A hat, Lucy, strangely, thought she _knew_.

A hat she had seen before.

She could have sworn, with the grey wool, and the little nick in the left of a stitch picked free, that _that_ hat was her daughters hat. The very one she had left the house in. But how would-

"Look what I found."

The smallest of the quartet made it to his friends, practically crooning, slapping the hat into the, what Lucy could only assume, leader's chest.

"She was with some other kids. Got Star to distract them. They split. She can't have strayed far from the mosh pit on the beach."

The platinum blond mullet dipped, frowning, as-

Well, Lucy thought he might have _sniffed_ the hat, but surely she had been mistaken. Who sniffed hats?

He came back up, smirking, rumbling something Lucy couldn't quite hear as he passed the hat to the two remaining boys. Lucy took a step forward, going to-

Well, she didn't know what she was going to do, but she was _sure_ that was her daughters hat, and-

A dog behind the counter barked. Lucy jumped, eyes wide, as she scurried a peek over. The dog growled in warning.

The door behind her buzzed.

The boys were gone.

Somewhere in the distance, motorbike engines revved. A roar of thunder.

She went to follow, but the towering man in the glasses strode in front of her, smiling, laugh lines deep in his cheeks.

"Wild kids."

He jerked his chin in their direction.

"Came in looking for their sister who got separated earlier. Looks like they found her. Good thing, really. It's getting very late, and its not safe to be outside alone."

 _Of course_. What had she been thinking? The hat was ordinary enough, beanies always were, and the poor boys were likely smelling their sisters perfume and-

She was so silly.

What else could it have been?

Michael wouldn't leave Bella. Bella who absolutely, though she had visited this place as a child, would not remember this way or that and-

 _Silly._

Utterly silly.

Blushing, Lucy tried to sidestep her hiccup, bumping her hip to wiggle the boy, who in turn, laughed.

"This boy seems to be lost too."

She began, glancing around the store. With the boys gone, there were only four other customers. None looked her way, as a frantic, currently childless, parent would.

"I thought maybe his parents might be in here?"

The man, a man who Lucy thought might be called Max, pushed his glasses up his nose.

"Well, let's see.''

He had a pleasant voice, Lucy thought. Cosy and rich, like logs on a hearth fire. The kind of voice you immediately trusted.

Anew, the door buzzed. A woman in her early twenties rushed in, gasping, frantic, desperate. Her gaze instantly landed on Lucy and the boy, relief flooding her face slack.

"Terry!"

She called to the child, and the boy wiggled to get down.

"Oh, thank God! I was so worried!"

Terry held out his arms to his mother, fingers flexing in a 'give me, give me' motion, and Lucy dutifully handed the boy over, now no longer crying, to the other woman.

"I don't know how to thank you."

Lucy shook her head fiercely.

"No thanks needed. My own daughter was a nuisance when she began to walk."

The maybe-Max-man plunged a hand into a jar on his counter and handed Terry a lollipop before the mother, grasping tightly at her son, left with one last string of thank you's.

"How about you?"

Lucy glanced up and saw him holding out a lollipop to her.

This one was different to the blues and yellows in the fishbowl.

This one was red.

Bright red.

Juicy like an apple.

The apple Eve bit.

"No thanks."

Lucy said as she smiled and shook her head.

Sluggishly, he pocketed the lollipop, the grin, however, never falling from his face.

"That was awfully kind of you. What you did for that little boy. A generous nature. I like that in a person. My name is Max."

He gestured down to the dog, once again sleeping, at his feet.

"This is Thorn. He's a bit grumpy, but means well. Protective of his family."

"Lucy."

She countered simply.

Max swept an arm about around him.

"So what can I help you find tonight, Lucy? We've got it all. The best selection in Santa Curia."

Lucy peered around at the store, really taking it all. There were a dozen TV screens behind Max, all airing miscellaneous programs: rock singers in tight pants, Bugs Bunny outwitting Yosemite Sam, John Wayne with a six-gun in hand, an old black-and-white film with an overweight corpse rising from a grave. Rock music shrieked from speakers overhead; as far as Lucy could figure out, it didn't go with any of the programs on the screens.

It was all a bit overwhelming.

She glanced back to Max. He was smiling, waiting. Lucy paused, then, doing something she never really did before, she went with her gut and thought, why not? What was the worst that could happen? A swift 'please leave'? she had nothing to lose, and she doubted she would find anyone friendlier around here at this time of night.

"I'm not looking for a tape. What I really need is-"

"A job."

Max finished the sentence for her.

Lucy nervously laughed, scratching at the back of her neck with blunt, chewed nails.

"Do I look that needy?"

Max shook his head, laughing. A hoot that reminded Lucy of sunbeams.

"I just have ways of knowing these things. It comes from living in a resort town for too long."

He strolled down to the end of the counter and pulled out a couple of straight-backed chairs, sitting down and gesturing to the other for Lucy to take.

"Why don't we talk about it?"

There were worst things to do on a summer night than talking with a handsome man about the prospects of a wage.

Yet, it was more than that.

There was something about him. It showed in the way he moved and talked. Something that said, in the way he carried himself, he had been through it all.

Just like Lucy.

Somehow, someway, he had come through, and found himself happy and alive, on the other side.

Lucy could too.

She took the seat opposite him.

* * *

 _Bella Emmerson's P.O.V_

There was no escaping it. Bella was lost. Regrettably, in more ways than one. Lost without her memories, lost in life, and lost within herself. However, being lost on the Boardwalk, as she currently was, trudging this way and that to find something that remotely looked familiar to anything else she had walked by when coming in with her siblings, was something she could completely blame on her brothers. Which she whole heartedly did.

One moment she had been relishing the music, happy for the first time in months, bantering with Sam, and then next-

Gone.

The Great Fucker, the name she was mentally calling her twin in the last hour, had been skirt chasing. Trailing after a girl, the last she had seen through the crowd, before she turned a corner and got lost. In his favour, Michael had likely forgot that… Well, Bella had forgotten _everything,_ and unlike him and Sam, who knew their way around the place from visiting as kids, Bella had no such luxury.

It was amazing what a pair of tits could do to a teenage boys brain.

Worse than the sixty feet of asphalt Bella's had gone skating across before it popped under a wheel.

Sometimes, when she tapped her head, she was sure she could hear the alumina plate clinking. Perhaps she would start decorating the side of her head with fridge magnets. Really go the nine yards.

Fridge magnets she could chuck at Michaels head.

Most awful still, she had gone and lost her hat. In a flash of bravery, one ushered in by having her brother's close, Bella had dashed it in the sand. It had been a… Moment, for her. Dramatic in a way Bella could be but would never admit she was. A breaking of chains she didn't know were binding her. In the sea of such strangeness that was Santa Carla, her scars didn't seem such a big deal.

But then her brothers had moseyed off, and her hat was missing when she went back to grab it, and without something to pin her curls down, her hair flipped over and bared the gnarly gash for all to see, and it burned with all the glances shot her way, and Lucy was nowhere to be found, and she was sure she'd passed this pizza place seven times now, and-

 _And._

Fuck.

Shit.

This was all Michael's fault.

Huffing, Bella kicked a crushed can, and plonked down on the steps of the pizzeria, slumping over, bent elbow on knee, running a tired hand down her face. It dragged tightly on the scar beneath her eye, tender and throbbing.

Throbbing like the headache slowly making itself known in her temple.

Throbbing like the sound of a motorbike engine skimming down the pier, spluttering to a gargling stop somewhere to her right. She paid no mind to it, as she kept her gaze trained on the boards of the wharf. Perhaps if she stayed still, right here, someone, _anyone_ , would find her and she may, if luck was on her side, make it home tonight.

God knew she wasn't going to do it herself with the circles she was pacing.

A thudding sounded off close by.

A step.

Another.

Two boots cut into her vision. Black, men's suede, scuffed at the toes as if the person wearing them was used to kicking.

A scrap of fabric came flying between her own feet, thrown down.

Grey wool.

Her hat.

"Hello, little lost girl."

* * *

 _Thoughts?_

 **A.N:** I know it's been super long since I last updated this fic, but at least I updated! Please keep the booing to a minimal, lol. Seriously though, because it's been so long, I won't be surprised if a lot of you have bowed out, and to make up to the ones who have stayed, instead of posting this in four chapters as I originally planned, I melted them all together and hope it's at least made up for some of the time. Good news too, I have most of the next chapter written, and I only have to tighten some stuff up before the next post!

Really, Thank you all for your patience with this fic, I really am sorry for the monstrous wait, and I do sincerely wish you enjoyed this chapter.

If you have a spare moment, don't forget to drop a review! And I will hopefully see you all soon. Until then, stay safe!


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